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lifted directly into Madame de V's coterie; and she put off the epocha of Deism for two years.

I remember it was in this coterie, in the middle of a discourse, in which I was showing the necessity of a first cause, that the young Count de Faineant took me by the hand to the farthest · corner of the room, to tell me my solitaire was pinned too strait about my neck. It should be plus badinant, said the Count, looking down upon his own; but a word, Mons. Yorick, to the wise-And from the wise, Mons. le Count, replied I, making him a bow, is enough.

The Count de Faineant embraced me with more ardor than ever I was embraced by mortal man.

met.

For three weeks together, I was of every man's opinion I Pardi! ce Mons. Yorick a autant d'esprit que nous autres. Il raisonne bien, said another. C'est un bon enfant, said a third. And at this price I could have eaten and drank and been merry all the days of my life at Paris; but 'twas a dishonest reckoning; I grew ashamed of it. It was the gain of a slave; every sentiment of honor revolted against it; the higher I got, the more was I forced upon my beggarly system; the better the coterie, the more children of Art,—I languished for those of Nature; and one night, after a most vile prostitution of myself to half a dozen different people, I grew sick,-went to bed,-ordered La Fleur to get me horses in the morning, to set out for Italy.

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I NEVER felt what the distress of plenty was in any one shape till now,-to travel it through the Bourbonnois, the sweetest part of France, in the hey-day of the vintage, when Nature is pouring her abundance into every one's lap, and every eye is lifted up, a journey through each step of which music beats time to Labor, and all her children are rejoicing as they carry in their clusters;-to pass through this with my affections flying out, and kindling at every group before me, and every one of them was pregnant with adventures.

Just Heaven! it would fill up twenty volumes; and alas! I

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